Tropical Storm Chris forms, and Gulf storm forecast changes

Update, 12:15 a.m. Wednesday: Forecasters tell the Associated Press that Tropical Storm Chris is accelerating off the coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, and is expected to fizzle out by Thursday.

The National Hurricane Center has designated a system hundreds of miles off the coast of Nova Scotia as Tropical Storm Chris.

This system, while being the Atlantic season’s third named storm when it’s only June 19, is of virtually no threat to land. It is, therefore, a classic fish storm.

Notably, only twice before in 1887 and 1959, has the third storm of the season formed earlier than this date.

Tropical Storm Chris from earlier this afternoon. (U.S. Navy)

Of potentially more interest is an area of disturbed weather centered over the northwestern Caribbean Sea. The National Hurricane Center predicts only a 10 percent chance of development into a depression or tropical storm during the next 48 hours, but things could change once the system reaches the Gulf. The key word is could, as it’s not clear whether this large area of disturbed weather will actually get its act together over the Gulf.

Significantly, over the course of the last day, there’s been a big change in the track forecast for this storm, which no longer appears destined for the Texas-Mexico border.

The image below, from ImpactWeather, shows several possible scenarios for this system:

(ImpactWeather)

There’s a wide variance in the models because the steering currents aren’t exactly clear after a couple of days.

The European model, for example, produces a very large trough of low pressure over the New England area, which would likely pull the Gulf storm east, toward Florida. The GFS forecast model also favors this scenario now.

Nevertheless there’s a lot of uncertainty with this system, and you can double that uncertainty when considering the potential track of such a poorly organized system.

The bottom line is that it’s probably not going to affect Texas, but given the uncertainty we can’t rule it out. So we’ll just have to watch and see.